


new in every moment

by bluebeholder



Series: One and the Same [18]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Families of Choice, M/M, Mage Rebellion (Dragon Age), Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Some angst, Worldbuilding, plot in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27782380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: Autumn, 9:37 DragonAnders, Fenris, and their refugee mages build a new life far from the Chantry and the center of the Mage Rebellion. For a little while, life is good.
Relationships: Anders/Fenris (Dragon Age)
Series: One and the Same [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654444
Comments: 13
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

“That’s it, almost there!” Fabian shouts.

“Quiet! You’re not the one in the wheel!” Brithari replies.

From atop the wall, Fenris watches the slow turning of the treadwheel below. It’s a simple enough crane, a wheel powered by two people turning it while walking inside, lifting stone blocks up to the broken wall of the castle. At the top of the wall, he, Barbigia, and Stas are waiting to move the blocks into place. Fenris and Stas bring raw strength; Barbigia brings magic and an affinity for stone.

They haven’t had to do any mining or shaping: the already-shaped stones remaining after the wall’s collapse were left where they fell in the bailey or outside the walls, ready for retrieval. The most arduous process is that of hauling baskets of rubble up to pour into the gap between the stones making up the layer of stone on either side. It will make the walls stronger, certainly, but he’d rather be pushing around the blocks as he is today. That feels like _doing_ something.

It takes a little more than five minutes for a single stone block to reach the top of the wall, with two people walking inside the wheel. While the people on top move the blocks into place, the next is loaded into the crane for lifting. With the help of magic—force mages who can lift the stones and other mages who can shape them—things are getting done much more swiftly than it should, with such a small working crew. Still, Fenris is inordinately tired of working up here.

And he’s utterly sick of wearing the shoes everyone insists he does.

“I’d like not to have to fix a crushed foot,” Anders informed him, on his first day working up on the wall. “So you will wear _boots_ just like everyone else.”

“They do not even _fit_ ,” Fenris said, aghast.

“You’ve had far worse,” Anders said. “Deal with it.”

So here Fenris is.

Dealing with it.

The block at last rises to the level of the wall. Fenris calls down to the crane to halt and it does, to relieved cheers from Brithari and Namaril inside. Together, Fenris and Stas pull the block forward and onto the rollers, to push it across to its appointed place. There, Barbigia takes over, setting the stone properly and shaping it to fit its place. He has a deft touch with stone—less so with other elements.

When the block is in place, Fenris leans on one they’ve already put in place. “Almost done,” he says, looking around at the wall.

“I’m about sick of hauling rock,” Stas says. “Only about two jobs for big guys in Qunandar: quarry and construction, or fighting. Happy my Tamassran thought I was a fighter.”

“After our trip, it is safe to say we all share that happiness,” Fenris says. He tips his head to the side, stretching the sore muscle of his shoulder.

Stas folds his arms. “Never thought all that fortification education would come in handy. Didn’t have it in me to be one of the sappers, but I learned enough. Still, glad we’re about done.”

“Likewise,” Fenris mutters. Below, the treadwheel creaks as it begins to turn again, the people inside taking a steady pace.

While the next block lifts, all is quiet on the wall. The warm wind ruffles Fenris’ overlong hair, blowing strands into his eyes; he pushes it behind his ears. It could be worse work today. But the sky is clouded, giving a reprieve from the still-blazing autumn sun.

Fenris looks out, to the fallow fields where several small figures move among the grasses. They’re examining the plants and soil, deciding which fields are best as pastureland for their few livestock and which will be tilled for planting in the spring. That will be a difficult job, and one that will continue all winter, until the fields are planted.

It is _blindingly_ obvious that Fenris will be dragged into helping with that, too.

Yet he isn’t complaining, not really. This is hard work, but good. And if he’s honest with himself, Fenris likes it. He enjoys battle, of course, it is a challenge and a rush of excitement to which nothing else can quite compare. This, though, is rewarding. There are no bodies strewn in the fields , only a strong wall built, a fence around a pasture, plants appearing in a garden. He feels better—tired, but he is using muscles now he’d never really used in a fight.

He hasn’t let his lyrium do more than flicker in a few months. There’s been no need for such a thing since coming here. As a result, the pain of the brands—though not gone by any stretch of the imagination—has lessened greatly. Fenris is more awake these days, more alert, and not in the way of constantly preparing for battle. The sky is brighter and the world is colorful. He feels as if he’s breathing easier, as if a load on his back has fallen away.

It’s better here.

-

“Hold _still_ ,” Anders says, for the fifth time. “You’d think, with all the times you’ve been hit…”

“A sword hurts less than the sun,” Fenris says. He presses his forehead to his folded arms.

Anders _hmphs._ “If you hadn’t gone taking your shirt off, this wouldn’t have been a problem.”

Fenris chooses not to argue. Anders is in a _mood_ , brought on by having to treat a dozen terrible sunburns in one day. The noon sun came out unexpectedly hot from early clouds, baking everything in its sight, but work couldn’t stop for that, with the wall repair almost complete. Almost all the workers had stripped down as much as possible, trying to cool off. It was a terrible idea. Fenris, Ornek, Stas, and Barbigia—darker-skinned than the rest—sustained painful burns on backs, arms, chests, and shoulders. Everyone else, pale natives of the Free Marches, Ferelden, and Orlais, burnt red as boiled lobsters.

Worse than the burns, in Fenris’ opinion, are the scoldings he’s received since coming indoors and out of the sun. Wilhelma told him he should have worn a hat at least: “You’re worse than Arnfried, I swear,” she said, giving her equally-scorched husband a scathing look. Ashahari, used to protecting her skin during long days in the sun working on her clan’s aravels, laughed at Fenris, even while helping him apply a soothing balm to his back. Her sister Shana, tawny skin dusted with freckles, informed him that he’d “get used to it soon enough.”

“It’s still not good for you,” Ashahari said, throwing a rag at Shana. “Wilhelma is right, both of you ought to wear hats. Or something.”

Shana caught the rag in midair and threw it right back, smacking Ashahari in the face. “I’ll look old when I get there,” she said. “ _You_ can go on looking like you’re not a day over twenty. _I_ will accept my hard-won wrinkles with grace.”

At last, Fenris got a turn with Anders. He’d started with the worst of the patients—like Binet, who had, with Tranquil stoicism, left his shirt on, and still ended up with blistered forearms—and Fenris was nearly last on the list of worries. Fenris accepted it, but it still took two hours of extraordinary discomfort before Anders finally deigned to see him.

Now here he is, in the pleasantly cool room Anders has reserved as in infirmary. Anders has already finished with the burns on Fenris’ chest and face, so Fenris can lie face-down on the low table while Anders finishes up the work on Fenris’ back. He’s quite grateful for the reprieve.

“You,” Anders informs him, one hand gliding down Fenris’ shoulder blade and leaving total relief in its wake, “should know better.”

“Please,” Fenris says, wincing a little at the odd tingle in the lyrium line down his spine as Anders’ fingertips brush it, “cease your scolding. I feel like I entered a henhouse on accident and every inhabitant has decided to shout at me.”

Anders sighs. He pauses and ruffles Fenris’ hair gently. “You all looked terrible, love. A bit frightening for the rest of us.”

Rolling his shoulders a little, releasing some of the tension, Fenris pushes his head a bit more into Anders’ hand. He feels a bit like their cat when Anders, laughing, obliges with a pleasant scratch to his scalp. And a kiss to the nape of the neck.

“I’m prescribing a week’s rest indoors for all of you,” Anders says. “The wall can wait until you’re less likely to burst into flames. And you’re to wear a shirt to cover up that skin, it will be very tender and another burn will hurt a lot more. Healer’s orders.”

“I cannot say I object,” Fenris says, sitting up and looking at Anders.

Anders smiles. “Good.” He leans in, as if to kiss Fenris on the cheek, but Fenris turns his head just enough that Anders meets his lips instead.

A moment later, Fenris leans back, shaking himself. “You still need to see to Ornek.”

“I do,” Anders says. “We’ll have to resume this later.”

“Yes, we will,” Fenris says. He smiles at Anders, sliding off the table. “For now, I am going to go find a shirt.”

Anders gives him a speculative look, gaze wandering all over his chest and shoulders. “ _Or_ you could leave it off.”

“Whatever happened to _healer’s orders_?” Fenris asks, neatly sidestepping Anders and heading out of the room. Anders laughs behind him, and Fenris smiles. 

The silence when Fenris stops talking feels like the silence after an explosion.

Anders just looks at him, waiting. It seems as if Fenris is done, but he promised to listen. It’s been a struggle, not to open his mouth and try to sympathize, to compare, but he managed it. Just sat and listened while Fenris talked. His shoulders ache from pressing against the bedframe and his leg is asleep from sitting so long on the floor, but Anders hasn’t been inclined to move.

“That’s all,” Fenris says at last, looking away. He sits cross-legged in the middle of their floor, an empty cup—which had a little wine, early on—in front of him. The guttering candle puts most of his face in shadow. “I have no more to say now.”

There are a hundred things Anders would like to say, but he promised not to say anything. Has the moment come when that changed? The uncertainty leaves him at a loss for what to do.

Fenris gives him a sideways glance. His voice is amused. “I can _hear_ you biting your tongue.”

“I don’t—I’m doing my best, here,” Anders says, immediately exasperated. He shoves that back with a will, though. That’s not the _point_ of this.

“And I am grateful for it,” Fenris says. He looks away again. “Perhaps. I am not entirely sure that dwelling so long on such things was…helpful.”

“They were particularly terrible things, to be fair,” Anders offers.

Fenris snorts inelegantly. “Understatement of the age.”

And it is. Fenris has only ever spoken of the interesting, adventurous parts of Seheron, touching only briefly on the horrors. It isn’t clear to Anders why he’d chosen that to discuss tonight, but he’d promised not to pry into that. No matter why, this new shape of the story throws everything else Fenris has told Anders into an awful light.

Stories of bloody battles fought in narrow streets under cover of thick fog, of friends obliterated by the war machine of the Qunari, of the call to arms when marauding Tal-Vashoth appeared out of the night. The alliances formed and shattered at every turn, making strange bedfellows: Fog Warriors fighting on a beach beside Qunari soldiers against a Tevinter incursion, only to turn on each other the second the Tevinter soldiers were dead in the bloody water—a Tevinter magister bringing his forces to bear against the Fog Warriors and their Tal-Vashoth allies, using intelligence provided by the Qunari.

Young fighters on all sides, fifteen and sixteen years old, hurling themselves into battles they had no hope of surviving. Children killed, marked off as collateral damage. A strange incident, where Fenris assisted a Ben-Hassrath agent in aiding the escape of almost fifty slaves working on a Tevinter ship, only to watch nearly everyone involved join the Qun on the spot, preferring that to dying on the blades of those who’d saved them.

That last one had seemed particularly difficult for him to discuss.

For another long moment of silence, Anders watches Fenris. His shoulders are held high and tight, tension in every line of him. He’s hardly moving, save for his hands. They rest on his knees, and in the faint light Anders can see him flexing his fingers, over and over, a nervous motion.

“Love,” Anders says softly, opening his arms a little, “do you want…”

Fenris looks up just as the candle goes out—how painfully, ridiculously poetic—which Anders would have commented on, if he hadn’t seen the faint glitter on Fenris’ cheek.

It takes a moment, but Fenris comes to him. Not comfortable, on the floor, but it’s not time to move yet. Anders knows how to do this, at least. Wait until you know if the back is hurt to pick someone up, until you know if the bleeding has stopped to take pressure off a wound. Hurt of the soul and heart isn’t much different, in the end.

Fenris rests on his side against Anders’ chest, legs folded, bracketed by Anders’ legs. One of his hands is on Anders’ thigh, the other in his own lap. His head rests on Anders’ chest, tucked just beneath Anders’ chin. His shoulder digs into Anders, but Anders bears it without comment. He does his best to hold, but not too tightly, not trapping Fenris in place.

Never does Fenris audibly cry. His shoulders shake, once or twice; Anders hears his breath catch a few times. But this is a private thing, even when Anders is _right there_. Anders wants _so much_ to offer words of comfort, make it all go away, but he promised Fenris he would wait. Until Fenris wanted him to.

For all Fenris’ strength, the solid muscle and weight of him, he feels _fragile._

“Amatus,” Fenris says after a while, hand tightening a bit on Anders’ leg. It sounds like the beginning of a statement, but he never goes on. He doesn’t move or speak.

Neither does Anders. He promised, after all, and this time he’s going to do it right. He’ll be quiet.

It’s not his turn to speak.

-

It has been years since Ornek had soil in his hands like this. This is good soil, too, untilled for a hundred years and protected by the deep-rooted grasses of these plains. If well-tended, it will produce good crops for years to come.

“No soil like this in the Anderfels,” Arnfried says softly.

Finished driving the stake into the ground beside the large stone, Ornek looks a few feet away, to where Arnfried crouches, letting soil trickle through his fingers. It seems they have checked it every day, even after the first tilling, as if it will change. But if the sea is changeless, the earth is even more so. “It is poor there?”

“The earth is red and dry,” Arnfried says, “crumbling between the fingers. Cracked under the sun, and full of stones. None can farm where the Blights came, but even beyond those places, even where there is grass, my plow turned over only dust.”

“The earth around Qunandar has been worked too much,” Ornek says as Arnfried rises to his feet again. “We strive to fix it, but it is not enough. I was sent to the south to study the farms in Antiva, and learn if it was worthwhile to claim some of that land under the Qun to feed our people.”

Arnfried dusts his hands off. “Was it?” he asks.

“It was,” Ornek says, as they set off across the field again, looking for more large pieces of debris to mark, “but I learned there, too, that land is better when it is tended by those who care for it. The great fields of Par Vollen are nothing like the small farms in Antiva. There, we forced the land to be what we demanded. Here, we work according to what the land will give. It is a balance. As I see it, this is closer to what the Qun should demand than what it does. The Arigena would not heed the advice I submitted, even as famine threatened Qunandar. So I left.”

“Yet you are not a farmer now, my friend.” Arnfried looks up at Ornek curiously.

Ornek shrugs. “There is no work for a Tal-Vashoth on a farm,” he says. “People call us monsters or ox-men. I am neither.”

Arnfried stops at another large rock and begins to drive a stake in beside it. Tomorrow, they will turn out in force to pull these stones free, removing them from the field so it can be tilled. “They did not hear us at home, either,” he says. “The king is concerned only with himself, and the Grey Wardens cannot help us in all things. They cannot bring trade to our shores. They cannot control the Merchant’s Guild and its fees. So our land dies.”

“The tales of the Anderfels said you should have been a warrior,” Ornek says, giving an experimental tug to a low shrub. It does not budge, so he drives a stake beside it. It will have to be pulled.

“I have fought darkspawn,” Arnfried says. “They are always a threat. Once I had to kill my neighbor, who was tainted.”

The matter-of-fact way he speaks reminds Ornek of the way veterans of Seheron speak of the fighting there. If he is like those veterans, Arnfried will not wish to speak further on the matter. “It is better here,” he says, to fill the silence.

Arnfried smiles. “It is,” he says, looking across the rolling plains.

Wind shivers in the grasses as they continue in companionable silence. The day is a fine one, at last beginning to cool as late autumn arrives. Still, even if the weather holds, it will be a week and more of work to pull this debris. Lucky for them that the walls are finished, and they will have the strength of others’ hands to help.

Ornek considers, as he drives in more stakes beside rocks and shrubs, the man with whom he works. Arnfried is a strong and hale man, with great height all Anders people seem to have. He is only a foot shorter than Ornek, and nearly as strongly built. In this, they are the same. Yet where Ornek’s skin is dark and gray, Arnfried’s would be pale if it were not tanned and ruddy from sun and wind. Ornek keeps his dark hair shaved close to the scalp, while Arnfried wears his straw-colored hair long. They are a study in contrasts. In the Qun, where so many live in harmony, it would never be thought odd, but here Ornek has heard them called an “odd couple.”

It extends beyond looks. Arnfried is fluent in the common tongue, but his Anders accent is so heavy that at first Ornek could not understand him. The feeling was mutual: Arnfried could not understand Ornek’s heavy Qunlat accent.

That is no longer a problem for either of them. The language of the land—the sun, the wind, the rain, the roots, all of what makes the deep heart of the world beat—is something they share. It overcame many of their differences. If Ornek is finding a purpose in tending to this land, then he is finding kinship in the tending. A new thing, when he has had so little in the way of either purpose or kinship since his abrupt departure from the Qun those years ago.

He has not known Arnfried long. Yet they have sat together many evenings now, debating the best way to till these fields and care for them, exchanging what they know of this climate—a pleasing compromise between that of Qunandar and that of the Anderfels—and of tools to use. Ornek has seen Arnfried look with adoration at his wife and heard him talk of their courtship, suspects that there is a little magic supplementing Arnfried’s love of the earth. Likewise, Arnfried has asked when Ornek inadvertently speaks of the Qun as if he still lives within it, knows Ornek’s concerns of living with mages. From all their distance, they have understood one another.

Ornek has never been tempted to be more than passing comrades with another. It has never seemed practical to him. Never the right time. Yet here he is learning that there is, somehow, never a right time for anything. The seasons change and no order, no system, no record, can force them to be what they should be. They will be as they are, and perhaps Ornek should abandon the pretense that he requires the _right_ time to make a friend.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Heads up: not-terribly-explicit sex scene at the end of the chapter.** Mostly just innuendo and implication, but still.

Somewhere in the dark grassland, an owl calls. It is different than the gentler calls of owls in Ostwick who made their homes around the isolated Circle, an eerie, rattling shriek. A barn owl, one which prefers grassland. Many mages find it frightening.

Alina does not.

“The mice should keep their eyes to the sky tonight,” Fenris remarks idly, leaning on the rampart. In the dark, his lyrium lines glow, so faintly that she can only tell after an hour walking the walls beside him in the night.

“They should every night,” Alina points out.

Fenris nods. “Fair enough.”

They have the second watch of the night. Around them, the castle is quiet; the animals sleep, and if the cat is awake she makes no noise on her hunt. Occasionally, Alina hears the suggestion of conversation somewhere below, but never loud enough to be sure that anyone is speaking. She watches into the darkness. The moon is barely a sliver, leaving the landscape illuminated only by starlight. It is, she acknowledges, quite beautiful.

“Do you prefer it here?” Fenris asks, after a long silence.

“Yes,” Alina says. “It is far more peaceful. There are fewer demands on the mind.”

“Agreed,” Fenris says. He straightens up and begins to walk along the wall. Alina follows him. He walks so quietly in bare feet that it seems the only sound in the night are Alina’s footsteps. “I find it a little odd to live in a place so full of thought. I had expected this to be a desperate bid for survival, not the establishment of a _university_.”

“Mages learn early that knowledge is the only currency that matters,” Alina says. “Habit is not easily abandoned.”

Fenris glances at her with a faint smile. “So I have learned.”

The owl calls again. Alina looks out, but if it took flight, its shadow is too easily missed in the pale starlight. They are pleasing to the eye. It would have been an interesting sight.

“It seems to me that a Tranquil mage would use the currency of knowledge even more than any other,” Fenris says.

Alina nods. “Life is easiest for one of us if we have some expertise at our disposal,” she says. “You see Binet: he has skill in enchantment and metalsmithing. Johann makes himself indispensable in thoroughness. I have chosen to increase my knowledge of the sword. None of us wish to be considered useless. That is a risk all Tranquil face.”

“I do wonder,” Fenris says, pausing and looking at her, “ _why_ you chose to learn to fight.”

Alina looks where the owl calls again. It is still invisible. “I will not remain a bystander,” she says. “To do so would be irresponsible.”

“Irresponsible,” Fenris muses. He half smiles. “Unusual, to hear a Tranquil mage speak so. I do not mean to offend, of course.”

“You are correct. It is unusual,” Alina says. “Safety demands that we are not, as a rule, rebellious.”

“But _you_ are.”

Alina nods. She continues watching for the owl. “I did not lose my conscience when the Templars conducted the Rite of Tranquility, nor did I lose my free will.”

“That’s been clear from the beginning,” Fenris says. She looks back at him as he rubs the sole of left foot against his right calf, a habitual motion. “You remind me very much of Anders.”

“Strange,” Alina says. “Anders is far more impulsive.”

Fenris waves a hand. “You have the same sense of justice. It is…odd to me. I spent most of my time in Kirkwall assuming Tranquil had no morality to speak of.”

“Many choose not to express any morality beyond that which the Chantry teaches,” Alina says. She considers her next words carefully. “Mages are taught to fear becoming like us. We are used as tools to control the Circles. We are aware of that, but there is no place for a Tranquil mage beyond the Circles, even though we are by Chantry law permitted to leave.”

At that, Fenris’ smile fades into something angrier. “That is one of my greatest regrets from Kirkwall,” he admits. “That I never listened to Anders that Tranquil were slaves in all but name.”

“Be clear,” Alina says. “We are not even that, in the eyes of many mages. We are objects.”

Fenris folds his arms, leaning against the rampart again. “Which, if mages have treated you so poorly, begs the question of why you choose to follow them and, more, why you _fight_ for them.”

“You have also been treated poorly and you fight for them,” Alina points out.

“I have reasons of my own,” Fenris says, glancing toward the room he shares with Anders. “I wonder about _yours_.”

Alina considers how to explain. “I have nothing left to me but rationality,” she says. “I do not have the emotions that you possess. But I have free will. I understand that suffering should be alleviated.”

“More of a wish to alleviate suffering than some I know who _can_ feel guilt and shame.”

“Perhaps.” Alina begins to walk again, Fenris following. “In short, reason leads me to believe that one should be willing to fight and die to prevent the suffering of another. I would expect this of any rational being. I am no exception to the law. The people here will suffer if I do not act, so I make my choice. I learn to fight.”

Over the castle is a rush of wings. A moment later comes that rattling owl’s cry. Alina pauses and looks to where the great bird sits, perched on a tower. It is as beautiful as she had expected.

“Whatever the reason you’ve chosen to fight,” Fenris says, “I’m glad to have you at my side.”

“I am glad to be at yours,” she says. They continue their walk around the ramparts, under the gaze of the owl. Soon enough, their watch will end, and someone else will take up the duty.

As they go, Alina reflects that, Tranquil or no, she _is_ glad. 

-

“This,” Anders says, “is the best of all possible days.” He looks out over the grasslands, swiftly turning to gold, with the sky perfectly blue above them. The view is wide and beautiful from where they sit on the tilted roof of one of the towers.

“I am _shocked_ you allowed me outside without a hat,” Fenris says.

Anders gives him a look. “Keep pointing it out and I’ll make you wear one.”

Fenris holds up his hands, smiling. “Very well.”

Gently, Anders pets Libertas, sunning herself on the roof. She patiently permits it, tail twitching and ears calm. “It’s nice to have things mostly settled.”

“I enjoy it,” Fenris says. He lies back, stretching out on the stone, arms under his head. “The wall is finished, the first tilling is finished, we have made our first contact with civilization…”

“I’m almost waiting for something to go wrong,” Anders says.

Fenris looks at him. “Optimism might benefit you, amatus.”

Ander smiles. “Fair enough.” He pauses. “And since when were _you_ the optimist here?”

“Since we _met_ ,” Fenris says. The look of affection on his face makes Anders’ heart do something funny. “You see doom around every corner.”

“I spent years thinking you couldn’t smile,” Anders protests. “You’re so _serious_!”

“Taking the world seriously does not preclude optimism,” Fenris says mildly. “I have hope that our circumstances will always improve. You, on the other hand…”

With a laugh, Anders surrenders. “All right, all right. I get your point. In that case, you go on glaring dourly at all the happiness you work for and I’ll go on laughing in the face of certain demise.”

“As it should be,” Fenris says, looking back up the sky, still smiling. “You will pardon me, I’m sure, if I think your ‘certain demise’ is farther off now than it has perhaps ever been.”

Down in the courtyard, people are laughing. There are no clouds, metaphorical or otherwise, on the horizon. A sense of peace settles over Anders. For a moment, even Justice seems to be happy. He is, no matter what anyone else thinks, capable of enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Quiet stretches out with their shadows on the roof. Libertas purrs. Wind whispers through his unbraided hair, ruffling around his shoulders. Anders closes his eyes, basking in having nothing to do. Nothing, for the moment, to worry about.

“I’m sorry,” Fenris says, so softly Anders almost misses it.

“What?” Anders opens his eyes and looks at Fenris, who is staring at the sky.

Fenris sits up, crossing his legs. “I have been unfair to you.” He pauses and adds bitterly, “Again.”

“ _What_ are you on about?”

“I struggle,” Fenris says, slowly, as if he’s reading from a script he wrote beforehand, “with the idea of compromise.”

“You’re entirely as bad at it as I am,” Anders says cheerfully. “Remove the chance of compromise, there can be no compromise, all that. Planning to set something on fire?”

It has the intended effect of making Fenris smile, at least a little. He runs his hands through his loose hair, pushing it out of his face. “Far from it. When I decided that I would throw myself behind your cause, I began to neglect myself. I did not speak to you when I should have. And I let resentment build.”

“Oh,” Anders says, very softly.

As he speaks, Fenris stares off at the horizon. “As I said. I struggle, sometimes, more often than I would like, with seeing beyond myself. I am not a selfless man, Anders.”

“But you—”

Fenris shoots Anders a look and Anders closes his mouth. “I blamed you for my self-neglect rather than recognizing what I had done. You have been very kind to me, and I am grateful that you have listened, but…I am sorry, for lashing out at you.”

“Apology thoroughly accepted,” Anders says. It’s almost surprising, that this apology brings him no sense of vindication. It _would_ have, six months ago.

“I expected you to be angrier, I admit,” Fenris says.

“We’ve both got a long way to go, love,” Anders says. He holds out a hand and Fenris takes it, giving him that exasperated look that says _I don’t understand you, mage_. Anders is certain it’s not his imagination, though, that the exasperation is colored by fondness. “We help each other. Simple as that.”

“You may be overstating things.”

“Now who’s the optimist?” Anders grins and Fenris laughs. “Truly, love. I meant it, when I said I’d help however I can. I know you mean it when you say the same.”

Fenris squeezes Anders’ hand. He doesn’t answer, but it seems to Anders he doesn’t need to. Once upon a time, this would have been a duel to the death. Now…it’s just a somewhat uncomfortable conversation no one really wants to have.

And this best of all possible days may even be the better for it.

-

Once upon a time, there was only silence.

Music is a risk, for those who need to remain below the notice of a captor. Instruments are rarely permitted to the Circles, luxuries mages do not require. Many mages have never been taught to carry a tune, and equally as many came to the Circles so young that they have no real knowledge of music beyond Chantry hymns. There might be some places where this is different, but not Ghislain Circle.

That is not a place of joy. It is located far from the seat of power at the White Spire in Val Royeaux, where a mage might seek patronage from nobility, even farther from the prestigious positions at Montsimmard Circle, elevated by having their First Enchanter appointed to the court. Nearly on the border with Nevarra, Ghislain is, in the words of the mages there, where Orlesian mages go to die.

Admittedly, it has its own prestige. The Formari have some of their best workshops and members at Ghislain, with some of the greatest Tranquil enchanters in the world. Yvonne learned a trade there, taking her early skill with an embroidery needle—a necessary trait for a noblewoman—to new heights.

She had little else to recommend her. Her magic was enough to land her in the Circle, but not enough to make her great. Her magic is _so_ pitiful that Yvonne should have been made Tranquil. So Yvonne turned single-minded attention to the art of the needle and shuttle and spindle, learning the subtle magic necessary to make a smooth thread, to keep the color in a thread, to prevent a loom from tangling, to keep needles sharp, to undo wrinkles in fabric.

She joined the Formari, making herself indispensable. Yvonne made robes that the Tranquil enchanted, stitched enchanted sequins into embroidered doublets for paranoid nobles, wove fine fabric carefully enchanted to protect against cold or fire. And, as much as she could be happy, she was. She made friends among the Tranquil.

It was enough, until it wasn’t.

Her skill was _just_ gaining notoriety when the war broke out. The Formari, mages and Tranquil alike, were recalled, trading posts across Thedas closed to prevent enchanted items getting out to apostates. The Templars cracked down on freedom. In Montsimmard, they said that the famous First Enchanter pushed back against it, protecting her mages. But the First Enchanter at Ghislain was weak. He did not care, either, about the Tranquil.

Yvonne took her needles and her spindle and her shuttle, leaving behind her staff, and ran with her friend Binet. They fled across the Free Marches, until they found safety with other mages. The leader of the Mage Underground took them in, gave them sanctuary.

Now here they are, an entire _continent_ away from Ghislain, and there is _music_.

Many of the people here whistle or sing tunes. Ostar plays the shawm, Malota is passable on tambourine, and Arnfried plays the fiddle very well. Ornek doesn’t have a proper percussion instrument, but he keeps flawless time. Shana plays a Dalish flute, which her sister Ashahari made; soon, if Ashahari finds the right strings, they’ll have her playing harp too. Halan can’t sing a note, but has a gift for rhymes and words that make him extremely good at lyrical composition.

Not a night goes by without some music. Tonight is no exception. Though it’s late and most of the castle is quiet, a few have remained in the main hall around the fire. Arnfried practices his fiddle, soft and slow, scales intermixed with scraps of melody. Old Maris reads. Fabian is transcribing, in his beautiful handwriting, copies of some letter that will go out from Anders to the Mage Underground. Stas is here, sitting by the hearth looking like he’s about to doze off. And of course, Yvonne.

She has a quiet project of her own, unrelated to mending clothes and spinning thread: embroidering herself a new border for her sleeves. She has some good thread, just enough to finish the project if she’s precise. It’s nice to sit here, though it’s late, and listen to music in quiet company.

Yvonne is concentrating very hard on a particularly tricky piece of work—shading on the petal of a flower—when she realizes it’s getting too dark to see. She looks up. The fire is almost dead and almost everyone is gone, save for Stas, looking into the slowly-sleeping fire.

“Oh dear,” Yvonne murmurs. She rouses herself and begins folding away her work.

“You looked real lost in thought,” Stas says, straightening up and stretching.

Yvonne glances up at him, unaccountably shy. “I was thinking about the work. I hope you were not waiting on me?”

He shrugs. “Felt rude, just leaving you sitting by yourself in the dark.”

“I thank you for waiting,” Yvonne says. She stands up, holding her work to her chest, looking up as Stas rises too. He’s _very_ tall, isn’t he?

“Any time,” he says, easy as ever. He pauses, and his next words are a bit awkward. “Would you…want some company going back to your workshop?”

Her heart does something funny. “I would,” she says softly.

“Good,” Stas says, looking relieved.

Neither of them say much, except to bid goodnight at the door. Yvonne watches Stas go through a crack in the door before shutting it and leaning back against it. Her heart is _still_ doing that ridiculous thing, but Yvonne doesn’t want it to stop.

For all that it’s so late at night, she feels like singing.

-

The wide land is silent, save for the hushing of wind through the waist-deep grasses and slender trees, and the songs of grassland birds. Even the wide stream, flowing fast, is placid and unruffled. Walking between these low, rolling hills, there is nothing to be seen. Half an hour ago they saw a small herd of antelope, and they’ve frightened a dozen rabbits, but that’s it.

“We’ve come across absolutely nothing,” Anders says, echoing Fenris’ thoughts. “And we’ve been out here for half a day.”

Fenris glances up at the sky, the sun past its zenith. “I had not noticed.”

Anders stops at the edge of the water and looks across the stream. “Do you think it’s different on the other side? The grass looks greener.”

“You may wade across and find out, if you wish.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

With a smile, Fenris looks further up the stream. It flows all the way back to the castle, feeding into the moat, and they’d hoped to perhaps discover something interesting—more ruins from the days when the castle was built, or fruit trees, or something else of note. All there is so far, though, is the stream in its gully between the low hills, and the thorny prairie trees taking advantage of the water.

“Perhaps we _should_ turn back,” Fenris says. “We may still return home before dark.”

“Disappointing trip,” Anders says. He sits down on the grass, setting down his staff and opening his pack. “We should eat something first.”

Fenris sits down, too, only noticing the ache in his feet now that he’s not standing. He sets his sword beside him, stretching. The warm sun feels good, and he tips his face up to catch its rays, closing his eyes.

Something lands in his lap and he opens his eyes. Half a small loaf of bread is in his lap, and Fenris suddenly catches the delicious scent of smoked meat as Anders unwraps the other part of the meal. It’s small—their company can only spare so much—but good.

They eat in silence. Fenris thinks on his further plans: taking the trip to the next closest town, to scout it out for safety, trying to get a message to one of their contacts about a need for more swords here… there is much to be done. Anders must be having similar thoughts.

As it turns out, Anders is not having similar thoughts.

Fenris has hardly finished eating when he finds Anders’ hands on his face, the lanky mage climbing practically in his lap. Anders is smiling, eyes bright. “I think we have some time,” he says.

“You wanted to return before dark,” Fenris protests halfheartedly.

Anders laughs. “You wanted that,” he says, the tip of his nose brushing the tip of Fenris’. “I’d like this a lot, love.”

Fenris sighs, but doesn’t bother trying to stop a smile. “Mage… fine.”

“Good,” Anders says, and kisses him.

Doffing his armor takes only a moment. Fenris is familiar with getting it all on himself, and having Anders to help makes the process even swifter. Besides, in the heat, he’s dispensed with everything but breastplate and gauntlets. More complicated is Anders’ coat, which he insists on wearing despite the heat, and because it’s an adapted gambeson and therefore armor, Fenris doesn’t object.

“Really?” Fenris asks, when Anders pulls a small flask of oil out of his pocket with a smirk.

“Really,” Anders says. “Why do you think I wanted the two of us to go alone?”

There’s no answer to that, because Fenris hadn’t even thought of it at all, so he just kisses Anders again instead.

Fenris loses track of time a little. Anders is even more passionate than usual, and Fenris finds himself caught up in the moment to match him. He keeps watching Anders, his long body lean and healthy in the afternoon sunlight, far from the starved and bony look he had even a few months before. It’s a happy sight. Not to dismiss, either, the way that his golden hair, made even paler by the strength of the sun, shines brilliantly.

“You’re indulging me,” Anders says, or gasps, flat on his back, his coat underneath him.

“ _Am_ I?” Fenris asks, looking up with interest from between his legs. “I thought I was being very selfish, keeping your pleasure all to myself.”

Anders laughs aloud, the sound dissolving into a moan as Fenris returns to work.

Though the sun is sliding quickly down in the sky afterwards, neither of them are inclined to move. A cricket chirrs in the tall grass nearby, or perhaps a cicada—Fenris doesn’t know which. His head is pillowed on Ander’s stomach, and he would very much like to stay here with Anders’ fingers carding through his hair slowly, fondly. Anders, when Fenris sneaks a look at him, seems to be nearly asleep.

“I think,” Anders says after a long, quiet while, “we should really take another… scouting trip soon. Just the two of us.”

“I like the idea,” Fenris says, turning his head to press a kiss to Anders’ sharp hipbone. “Give me the day, and I will happily go.”

Anders smiles at him, amber eyes almost glowing in the bright day. “Good,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s canon information for everything Alina talks about regarding Tranquil mages. The character you should really look at is Maddox, if you want to see a canon example of a Tranquil mage doing what Alina does in dedicating himself to a cause. He ultimately dies for that cause and person he believes in, which...well, nothing's guaranteed, but I can safely say I don't plan on letting Alina die any time soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Take note: depiction of an episode of hypomania at the beginning.** Anders is canonically bipolar and I would like to do that justice. Drawn from my personal experience of past episodes.

It’s been so long since Anders was really, really happy like this.

He’s hardly been able to sleep the last few days, with his thoughts flying like birds. Justice has been active, too, both of them feeling inspired in a way they haven’t felt in so very long. Anders has started a new work, a thesis on the matter of what advancements mundane applications of magic might bring to the world, and he’s nearly completed a first draft.

“You have nearly run out of paper,” Fenris said, when Anders showed him, “and of candles.”

Anders only laughed. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “More will come, I’m sure of it.”

More does come, though not as much as Anders would have liked, not when he has so very many letters to write. To his contact Remy in Cumberland, to the other members of the Mage Underground, off to the Wardens in Ferelden just in case his letter can make it to the Warden-Commander—or, rather, the Queen of Ferelden. Both? He hasn’t heard from her since leaving the Wardens, either way. This letter, though, this should do it. This time.

“You need to sleep,” Fenris says to him, late one night.

“I’m all right,” Anders says, waving him off.

Fenris scowls from the bed. “You are keeping me awake, Anders,” he says, and the sharpness of his tone gives Anders pause.

“I’ll write elsewhere, then,” Anders says after a moment. He takes his things and departs, just barely catching Fenris’ frustrated sound as he goes.

He feels more awake now than he has in years. It’s amazing, like he’s fallen back in time to the days before Kirkwall, before it all wore him down to nothing. Anders never wants to come down from the heights of joy he’s found now.

Fenris is accommodating, when Anders wants to sleep with him. He can hardly keep his hands off Fenris at any other time. Right now, Fenris is almost irresistible, and the only thing keeping Anders from begging him to stay in bed for an entire day is Fenris’ general indifference to sex. He doesn’t want to push that too far and make Fenris uncomfortable. Still, they’ve gone from weekly activities to nearly nightly, and it’s wonderful. Brilliant.

And the ideas! He talks to anyone who will hear, asking them for input on ideas. No matter how far-fetched, he can envision exactly how they’ll come about. Returning to Kirkwall, or taking a venture to Tevinter, or going into Antiva—

“Look,” Anders says one day, pulling Fenris aside from his work helping to till the first field, “I’m starting to think we should take our horses and ride south again. Things are going very well here, and—”

“Stop,” Fenris says sharply, looking up at Anders. “We are not going anywhere. Not now.”

“A jaunt, at least,” Anders argues. “Just to see how things are getting on. If we really went for it, we could reach Cumberland. I hear that the Grand Enchanter is really starting to make waves, I think she’d listen to us if we—”

He stops as Fenris turns away. “I will not hear any more of this,” he says, and goes back to work.

It’s a bit of a blow, but Anders sets the idea aside for now. Fenris will come around. He’ll have to.

He’s in the infirmary when Malota finds him. She strides in, closing the door firmly behind her, and walks right up to Anders where he’s preparing to test a new healing potion mixture. He looks down at her, hard eyes and firm expression, a little unsettled.

“Has something gone wrong?”

“Yes,” Malota says. “You have.”

Anders takes a step back. “What?”

She folds her arms. “We’ve all noticed,” she says. “You’re acting like you’re high on lyrium. I trust that you’re not, but still. You’ve half run us out of candles, you’re saying things that are scaring people. It’s time to stop, Anders.”

It feels like Malota hit him. Anders takes a deep breath. “And…why are you the spokesperson?”

“Fenris doesn’t want to start a fight with you, and everyone else is too uncomfortable,” Malota says. “I don’t care what you do about this, but leave the rest of us out of it.”

That night, Anders asks Fenris if Malota was telling the truth.

“She was,” Fenris says. He looks helpless, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest on their bed. “I feared to hurt you, Anders. Shouting at you would do nothing.”

“I’ve been _scaring_ people,” Anders says, staring at his hands. “I…didn’t even notice.”

“I know,” Fenris says.

Anders looks at him, meeting worried eyes, dark in the evening. “I’ll come down,” he says quietly, “eventually. I always do. You know I will.”

“I do,” Fenris says. “It is good to see you smiling, Anders.”

“It’s good to smile,” Anders says, but he isn’t smiling. He looks out the window, turning away. “I don’t know why I’m like this.”

The bed moves. Warm, strong arms wrap around him from behind, and Fenris’ chin rests on his shoulder. “You are how you are, mage,” he says, “and I will not have you attacking yourself for it.”

“I scare myself, too,” Anders says. “And Justice.”

“You do not scare _me_.”

Anders leans back against Fenris and doesn’t answer. He wants so badly to get up, to move, to do something. As if his body isn’t under his control.

But he breathes, and lets Fenris hold him still for a while.

-

“No,” Ashahari says, staring with horrified fascination into the bowlful of black liquid, “you can’t possibly eat _that_.”

Wilhelma looks up from stirring it. “Schwarzauer is a favorite comfort food in the Anderfels,” she says, matter of fact.

Ashahari can’t stop sneaking looks at it. “But it’s—it’s _blood_ ,” she says.

“There’s blood in all meat,” Wilhelma says, a smile tugging at her mouth.

“That’s different,” Ashahari says. “I don’t make _soup_ out of it!”

“You make food with beetle larvae,” Oudin points out from across the table, where he’s making dumplings under Wilhelma’s directions.

With a scoff, Ashahari waves a hand. “Also different. _Those_ are delicious. And besides, they have texture like snails, which I thought you Orlesians ate?”

“That’s…fair,” Oudin admits.

“This,” Ashahari says, gesturing at the soup in progress, “is just _weird_.”

It’s the giblets of wild grassland birds, whose names Ashahari still doesn’t know, boiled with salt and onions. There are dried fruits and some spices boiled, too, and Wilhelma will mix all this and the blood of the birds together to make a strange soup. Ashahari has never heard of such a thing. Always in the past she’s helped to bleed birds, to make sure the meat lasts longer, but no one has ever tried to keep the blood, or thought of eating it. When Shana and Tegren brought these in, Wilhelma insisted on putting a bowl under them to catch all the blood. Now…soup, apparently.

Wilhelma pauses to pick up the bowl of boiled fruit, mostly cooled, and carefully pour the juice into the blood. She resumes stirring gently. “No one can afford to waste food,” she says frankly. “It would be wrong to simply discard the blood. So we use what we have and make a treat of it.”

Ashahari isn’t entirely sure what to say to that. So she points at the pot of giblets and onions, cooling beside the hearth. “Shall I get that for you?”

“Yes, please,” Wilhelma says.

Careful with the heavy pot, Ashahari brings it over. Wilhelma pours all the contents of the bowl into it and Ashahari resists the desire to comment. It smells very, very strongly. The stuff in the pot is lumpy with giblets, the broth thick, dark, somewhere between bruise-purple and dried-blood-brown.

Which makes sense.

Still, she helps Wilhelma put the pot back on the hearth, so the soup can finish cooking. “I understand,” Ashahari says after a while, perching on the table with her arms folded on her knees. “We don’t like wasting anything either in my clan.”

“I wouldn’t eat beetle grubs,” Wilhelma says with a sideways smile.

“Tell you what,” Ashahari says. “I try your soup, you try my larvae.”

Wilhelma shudders, but she smiles more brightly. “A deal,” she says. “Perhaps we’ll both enjoy.”

-

“The new safe houses are established here, here, and here,” Elena says, tapping spots on the map: one on the coast of Wycome, one near the Telleri Swamp in Antiva, and one far off in the middle of Nevarra. “Good people, willing to take a chance for mages on the run.”

“I like that,” Anders says. “Next on the agenda?”

Elena sighs. “Rhodes insisted on booking passage south to Ferelden. He wants to try to meet people there. I think it’s an awful idea, but…”

“Rhodes is a wise and clever man,” Fenris puts in. “Did he say where he would be going?”

“Of course not,” Elena says.

It’s one of their tenets: need-to-know information. Even Anders, ostensibly leading and organizing all this, only has a few tenuous connections to the rest of the Mage Underground. They learned from Kirkwall that having a single point of failure is a recipe for disaster. Now, if one person falls, the fragile network will be able to go on. Anders only knows the names of his personal contacts. Elena won’t even know the exact locations of the safe houses, only that they exist.

“Rhodes wants to use the Antiva location to move people north to you,” she says. “The one in Nevarra will get people up into the Anderfels, there’s something happening there.”

“Oh?”

Her lips thin. “My husband, in his infinite wisdom, is trying to make contact with people there who might be able to help.”

Fenris rubs his face. “Wisdom, you say?”

“We disagree on it,” Elena says simply.

This visit was very unexpected. Messengers, of course, come at irregular intervals, but to have another leader of the Mage Underground arrive was startling. Anders is glad to see Elena, though—she’s brought with her a great deal of news that couldn’t come by courier.

His letters to Remy in Cumberland have only brought spare news, but Elena has more thorough information. Grand Enchanter Fiona, always on the forefront of major movements in the Circles, is openly calling for a vote for the Circles to formally secede from the Chantry. Thus, the acceleration of finding places for mages to go, should the vote go through.

The Chantry won’t take something like that lying down.

Elena exhausts all her information—at least the information Anders needs to know—before taking them up on their offer of a bed and some food. She eats ravenously, then falls asleep the moment she’s under a blanket. No wonder, she’d ridden fast enough to exhaust her horse.

“I am worried,” Fenris says, standing on the rampart with Anders, “that this will go poorly.”

“You think?”

Fenris frowns. “I have heard much of the Grand Enchanter, and I believe all of you when you say that she is a strong-willed woman, but Orsino was a strong-willed First Enchanter. He did nothing against Meredith, in the end, and Elthina never exercised her power to control Meredith. Will that be different, when the Grand Enchanter must confront the will of the Knight-Vigilant? Will the Divine control the Templars where Elthina did not?”

Anders looks up at the sky. “She won’t,” he says.

“That is why I worry,” Fenris says. “The Circle in Kirkwall was nearly slaughtered and the Chantry would have blessed it. What will stop the Templars from slaughtering the College of Enchanters?”

The words hit Anders hard enough that he can’t speak for a moment.

“I never thought of that,” he says. He leans heavily on the wall, his knees suddenly feeling weak, hands sharking. “I…Fenris, they…they can’t.”

Fenris shakes his head. “They can,” he says, with brutal bluntness, arms folded. His face is impassive. “No master will simply stand by and allow their property to vote for freedom.”

Of anyone here, Fenris would know, wouldn’t he?

“We’ll just have to be ready,” Anders says, after a long silence. “That’s all we can do.”

-

There are new people coming to live here. Anders announced it two weeks ago, and everyone has been all anxious about it. Airing out a room, talking about how to welcome them, worrying about how they’ll feed three more mouths. It’s supposed to be a family: a mother, a father, and a little girl.

Lea just hopes that the girl will be nice.

“What if she’s rude?” she asks Fenris one day, following him on a walk around the fields. He might not be quite the right person to ask, but everyone else has just told her not to worry about it. At least she knows Fenris will be honest.

“Then you will deal with it when it happens,” Fenris says, looking down at her.

“I just want her to be my friend,” Lea says. She hops down into the small ditch Ornek and Arnfried dug, to start irrigating the fields, to pick some of the wide green leaves of the young plantain plants sprouting in the ditch. She can’t pick too many, since they want to have these growing, but Maris gave her a basket and told her that if she was going to wander, she should bring something back with her to show for it.

Fenris stops and waits. “It will not be hopeless even if she does not like you at first.”

Lea frowns. “But that’s not how friends work.”

“Anders and I used to hate each other.”

“You did?” Lea stands upright and climbs back up, ignoring her wet shoes. The basket is half full now, and they’re only halfway around the field. “But you’re almost married now, aren’t you?”

Fenris laughs aloud and looks surprised at himself. “I would not call it married. We are very close, that is all. It took us a great deal of time, but it was well worth it.”

“It was,” Lea says.

“Consider being friendly from the start,” Fenris says. “I am not very…good…at making friends, but I have seen that those who are begin with a smile.”

Lea takes the advice to heart. She thinks long and hard about what to do, and eventually decides to do what people used to do in the Circle, and give a gift to show how she feels. Lots of mages show that they want to be friends like that.

She has a little wooden doll, which Binet carved for her soon after they met, the first toy Lea had ever been allowed to own. Lea doesn’t know how to whittle, so she has to try something else. In the Circle, they used to make dolls out of handkerchiefs, so they could be taken apart right away if someone scolded about it. Lea knows how to make one, but she wants this one to properly last.

Yvonne helps Lea to sew the doll together, instead of just tying it with a string or ribbon. It’s really just a head and arms, but Lea also (with pricked fingers) gives the doll eyes, and a mouth, and hair. She does her best to make a little bonnet, too, so the doll looks really refined.

The family comes unexpectedly, arriving late in the day. Lea stays back while the grown-ups rush about, helping them to unhitch the tired mule from the small cart, and unload the family’s goods. She watches at a distance while the mother, in a dress that looks like it used to be nice, talks to Anders. A little girl stands very close to her.

After a while the buzz of activity dies down. Everyone is going to go inside and get the travelers fed. Lea feels like she’s going to faint, but it’s now or never.

“Hello,” she says, running up to the girl, “my name is Lea, it’s very nice to meet you.”

The girl looks at her with wide eyes. “I’m Nella,” she says, sticking out her hand, “I’m eight years old, and I’m from Starkhaven.”

Lea shakes her hand and then, remembering, fishes in her pockets. “I made you something,” she says. She pulls out the doll and offers it carefully. “To—to welcome you.”

Nella, eyes still very wide, takes the doll. She looks at it, and then hugs it. “I had to leave mine behind when we ran away,” she says. “The Templars were going to take me.”

“Well, she’s yours,” Lea says. She points at the great hall, where Nella’s father is talking to Fenris by the door. “We should get dinner.”

“All right,” Nella says. She smiles. Lea takes her hand and Nella follows her inside. 

-

_Charles Howe is dead. He was caught by Templars while traveling by open road in the Anderfels. We believe he was making for Weisshaupt, but whatever his plans were, they died with him. From him, the Templars learned of the Nevarra safe house and came to destroy it. We lost the mage sheltering there and nearly lost Elena too in the fighting. We don’t believe they have any other information, but even so, we’re lying low and pulling back to the Free Marches. Elena is badly injured and grieving, but still with us._

_Keep your head down. We will not move any more mages until it’s safe again. The Templars are aware that people have organized to help their quarry, and we are breaking the lines until things quiet again. Remain safe and remain quiet. We’ll send a courier when things begin again._

“From Arhel,” Anders says, when Fenris puts down the tattered paper. He looks blank, stunned.

“Elena warned Charles not to pursue the Anderfels lead,” Fenris says.

Alina takes the letter and scans it. “I agree, the wise course is to lie low,” she says.

“Damn, damn, damn!” Anders turns away, walking to the window. His shoulders are high, tense.

Fenris passes the paper to Malota. “It is unfortunate. As long as all survive, though…” Anders doesn’t speak.

“Stupidity got him killed,” Malota says, dropping the letter, “but it’s stupidity I like. At least he went down fighting.”

“And, perhaps, could have compromised all of us,” Alina says.

“No one knows our exact location save the couriers,” Fenris says. He rubs his face with both hands and winces. His lyrium hurts more today. News like this always makes it worse.

Anders turns back around and, though he still looks tense and angry, his voice is calm. “We’ll stay as we are,” he says. “We all knew that being here would separate us from the action. This is a safe place, not a fortress against a siege.”

“Unless it must be,” Maris says, speaking up for the first time. She sits in the room’s only chair, a courtesy for her worsening knees. Age has finally begun to catch up with the old warrior. “I would not like to see this place harmed.”

“Exactly,” Anders says. A little bit of blue light flares in his eyes and, for a moment, his voice is of a different, alien timbre. “The time will come for us to move boldly. That time is not yet.”

Malota scoffs. “Got a timetable there?”

“Almost,” Anders says. He leans on the table, voice back to normal. “We’re all waiting on the results of the vote in the College of Enchanters. That will do…something.”

“I doubt that it will be beneficial to us,” Alina says, chewing the end of a lock of hair idly.

Fenris nods. “Agreed.”

“Whatever it is,” Anders says, “it will give us a new course. We’ll have a better idea of what’s needed. It might be time to move, then.”

“When is the vote?” Maris inquires.

Anders sighs. “That, I don’t know,” he says. “Last I heard, the Grand Enchanter was still agitating for it, but she’s apparently facing some strong resistance. The Imperial Enchanter from Orlais is pushing back very hard, and the Templars aren’t exactly friendly to the idea.”

“I hate this,” Malota mutters, folding her arms.

“So do I,” Anders says. His voice is still calm, but Fenris can hear the defeat in it. “Still, all we can do is wait and see.”

The others depart after that, leaving Anders and Fenris alone. As soon as the door closes, Anders’ shoulders slump. He leans more heavily on the table and bows his head.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says quietly.

Fenris reaches over the table and covers Anders’ hand with his own. “As you said. We must wait.”

“We could be doing something,” Anders says.

“Even your spirit agrees that it is not the right time,” Fenris says. He ducks his head a bit, trying to catch Anders’ gaze. Anders just looks away. “Amatus. You have done what you must. Others are carrying on the fight.”

“I’ve spent so long fighting for this, Fenris,” Anders says quietly. “Almost ten years. I’m tired.”

Fenris squeezes Anders’ hand a little. “This is the moment to rest, then.”

He is unsurprised when Anders doesn’t answer. His shoulders shake a little, and his breath hitches. Fenris waits in silence. He knows this helplessness well, this long waiting for an attack to come. It is never easy.

All they can do is endure.

-

Autumn nears its end, and the days are getting cooler, nights longer. It’s a reprieve from the hot sun of the earlier part of the season. Rivain’s winter will be very mild, so they won’t see snow. Anders likes it. Kirkwall’s slushy winters and Ferelden’s frigid, wet winters had never been to his liking.

He and Fenris are taking the afternoon watch today. They don’t usually do it together, but today Fenris had asked. In the warm sun and cool breeze, there’s no need for a coat. Anders is in shirtsleeves, and Fenris just in his tunic and leggings.

It’s a new tunic. The Paines, the recent arrivals from Starkhaven, used to be traders in fabric and similar sundries. When they took flight, they’d taken some of their stock to trade for supplies along the way. What’s left they gave to Yvonne, who’s been using it to patch up and re-outfit everyone else.

Fenris had tried to refuse, but instead Anders had been treated to the sight of tiny, shy Yvonne dressing Fenris down about his ancient, threadbare clothes “that will be barely fit for kitchen rags!” She made him a new outfit: a dark green tunic, on the same pattern as his old one, and sturdier leggings. It is, in Anders’ opinion, amazing. The green brings out Fenris’ eyes, and the color makes him look far less dour than his old outfit.

“You are thoughtful today,” Fenris says, stopping to lean on the rampart.

“Just considering the weather,” Anders says.

Fenris nods. Wisps of white hair are coming loose around his face. He looks, for all that they’re supposed to be keeping watch for trouble, carefree. The perpetual furrow between his brows that had been there for as long as Anders has known him is gone. “It is a fine day.”

“Really feels like autumn,” Anders says, closing his eyes to bask in the sun. “Though, do you know what I miss about Kirkwall?”

Fenris sounds as nonplussed as a cat who’s been petted without permission. “What…? No, mage, I do not.”

“It’s a silly thing. I just remember this time of year, when the apple harvest started coming in. People in Darktown only got the terrible ones, so they’d make applesauce out of it. I got a lot of it. That and cider.”

“Delightful.”

“It was,” Anders says. “Lived on it for half of autumn, one year. I’d like some now, but. Well. Apples don’t grow in Rivain, do they.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Fenris says. “I cannot remember the last time there was anything but wild game or salted meat on our table.”

Anders laughs, turning his face into the wind. “Living a rich life, we are.”

“I think we are,” Fenris says.

He sounds so thoughtful that Anders opens his eyes to look at him. Instead of looking out toward the horizon, he’s looking behind and down into the courtyard. Anders follows his gaze. The fine weather seems to have brought everyone outside. Yvonne is spinning thread in the sun, chatting away with Ostar as the mercenary, friendly to almost no one, darns his shirt. It looks like someone taught the young girls to play hopscotch, and they’ve roped the older boys into their game. Halan is sweeping the courtyard, and has to keep going back to deal with the wood shavings Ashahari is leaving around her as she works on making her harp and the bits of feather Shana leaves as she fletches arrows. From within the hall there’s the clatter of pots and pans, and there’s laughter behind Anders, out in the fields, as someone working there makes a good joke.

It’s about as far from the Circle as Anders has ever been.

“You’re right,” he says. “This is a good life.”

Fenris looks up at him. “I am coming to understand freedom, I think,” he says, just as quiet. “I knew nothing about this life when I left Tevinter. And Kirkwall was…not a place for life like this.”

“I didn’t even know this was what I wanted,” Anders says quietly. He shrugs, feeling self-conscious under Fenris’ scrutiny. “I’d never…there wasn’t even anything like this in my memory. I didn’t think this was possible for us. For mages, I mean. Just living. Even if we were free, it would always be a fight to keep that freedom.”

“That was my life for a very long time,” Fenris says. He takes Anders’ hand. “This is…so much better. A life worth living. And defending, when we must.”

“I still sometimes can’t believe it’s a ‘we’ now,” Anders admits quietly.

“Amatus. We are in this together.” Fenris pauses, as if steeling himself to make a confession, and continues: “You do not have to be alone anymore.”

Anders meets Fenris’ eyes, bright in the sun, and forgets what he was going to say. He just pulls Fenris into a kiss instead, bending down to meet him, trying to pour every ounce of gratitude and love in his heart into it. He’s not sure he succeeds, because there’s so much Anders doesn’t know what to do with it all.

They’re both a little breathless when Fenris leans back, eyes wide, but Anders still manages to get a few words out. “You don’t have to be alone, either,” he says, brushing those strands of hair from Fenris’ face. “Trust me.”

Fenris smiles at him. “I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with waiting for this update!! <3
> 
> According to World of Thedas Vol. 2, there are Dalish dishes incorporating beetle larva. The soup Wilhelma makes, “Schwarzauer,” is a real German soup.
> 
> It's time to start playing "Spot the Inquisition Companion!" We've now had a mention of the Iron Bull and, at a distance, seen Vivienne. That whole thing is on the horizon. So...yeah.

**Author's Note:**

> I headcanon that Fenris crossed paths with the Iron Bull on Seheron. Might explore that down the road, but for now suffice it to say I’ve stared at timelines so long that my head started spinning. By my estimates, Fenris was about twenty on Seheron, and the Iron Bull was about twenty-four, in his third or fourth year of service. While Fenris is taken back to Tevinter after a little less than a year, Iron Bull will go on to spend another six to seven years there before PTSD catches up.


End file.
